<H1>Helping Students Become Relevant</H1>
<P>By Nelson Beaudoin
<P><a href="mailto:nbeaudoin@fairpoint.net">Nelson Beaudoin</a> was Maine's 2000 NASSP Principal of the Year. He has authored three books published by Eye on Education: <I>Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone: Lessons for School Leaders</I> (2004), <I>Elevating Student Voice: How to Enhance Participation, Citizenship and Leadership</I> (2005), and <I>A School for Each Student: Personalization in a Climate Of High Expectations</I> (2008). He has recently retired.
<P>Students can lead one another toward changing their own school culture--you just have to provide the opportunities, get them started, and encourage the process.
<P>Believing that students have the capability to make a difference is an important component of creating schools where each student can succeed. The "school for each student" model requires that the formula of the three Rs--relationships, rigor and relevance--be expanded in ways that help students gain significance. We must not only teach content that has relevance, we must also provide opportunities for students to <I>be</I> relevant. The following account demonstrates that students can make dramatic civic contributions that affect their school and community through specially designed student-centered events.
<P>In spring 2008, I had a brief meeting with a tenth-grade student to discuss his academic schedule for the following year. Prior to this routine meeting, my interactions with Eric had been limited to saying hello in passing. We had certainly not developed a relationship that would have allowed me to predict what happened next.
<P>As we finished up and I was walking him to the front door, he stopped and timidly said, "I think I want to thank you."
<P> "I appreciate that, but what are you thanking me for?" I responded.
<P>He continued anxiously, "I want to thank whoever was responsible for the last Challenge Night program."
<P>A bit taken aback, I thanked him for the kind words and went on to say, "the idea for that Challenge Night was really student initiated and all I did was support their work. But I'll pass on your compliment. Tell me, what was the best part of the program?"
<P>Eric continued, "Well, the entire program was really good. One of my friends attended the program and it helped him decide to quit using drugs. My friend was headed for trouble fast, and the program woke him up to what he was doing. Challenge Night played a big part in helping him get turned around. I just thought I should tell somebody."
<P>This story highlights how students can be empowered to make a difference in their school and community. A student-initiated and student-led program called Challenge Night had influenced another student's behavior relative to the use of drugs and alcohol. This would be a difficult topic in any school, and many school leaders would be reluctant to seek the help of students, but I believe that programs can be crafted to enable student ownership of even the most taxing issues facing schools today. The subject matter could just as easily have been bullying, academic standards, school vandalisim, athletic commitment or any number of school concerns because students can definitely be a part of the solution in all these areas. When we start looking at students as possibilities instead of problems, these issues can be faced with hope. 
<P>I discovered this reality a decade ago when I was the principal at Leavitt Area High School in Turner, ME. At my wife's suggestion, I invited twenty-six students to a pizza party and viewing of the Teen Files video <I>Surviving High School,</I> which she had seen on PBS. The video was a moving portrayal of the struggles teens face, and included footage of the Challenge Day program (<A href="http://www.challengeday.org">www.challengeday.org</A>) created by Rich Dutra-St. John and Yvonne St. John-Dutra. After showing the video to the students, I asked them if they felt that our school could benefit from this video, and how we might structure a program to maximize its impact. I was astounded by their response. 
<P>They were instantly energized and emotionally committed to developing a program that they could share with their schoolmates. They suggested alterations to the way I had structured the initial program and set out to create an event that other students would find inspiring. We had intended to wrap up our evening at around eight o'clock, but at ten my students were still passionately putting the finishing touches on a plan they felt would transform the climate at our school. They were not going home until they were done.
<P>On that night, we conceived the Challenge Night program, based loosely on the program depicted in the video. The students had developed a four-hour program aimed at hooking the participants emotionally and then asking them to take ownership for the problems that they faced in their school. In short, they were hoping their plan would affect how students treated one another at their school.
<P>Several weeks later, 100 students attended our first Challenge Night and the results were astonishing. The participants left with a determination and commitment to work towards improving the climate at our school. But the greatest outcome was that the students began to believe that they had been empowered--that they had been trusted with the vital assignment of making the school a better place for everyone.
<P>Years later, when I became the principal at Kennebunk (ME) High School, the staging of three Challenge Nights early in my first year enabled us to gain the confidence of the student body and propel the school towards numerous reforms. Among the most important changes we accomplished was an increase in student voice and participation, which is at the heart of the Challenge Night model. Since those initial Challenge Nights, we have utilized the program to provide students an occasion and the permission to work at improving things that matter to them. We recently had our students participate in four Challenge Nights around the topic of drugs and alcohol use. Regardless of the theme, in each case the structure of the events has been fundamentally the same.
<P>The activity is scheduled and announced without a lot of specific information. It's good to have an element of mystery and secrecy, which tends to attract students. There are 100 slots available for students who accept the challenge, and these volunteers are divided into groups of eight with attention paid to creating diverse groups. Each group is assigned a student facilitator who has been previously trained or has attended a prior event. Often these facilitators are extensively involved in planning the program. 
<P>Typically the program starts with icebreakers and group-building activities. Usually there is some type of survey or inventory of current realities among the participants so a baseline can be established for later goal setting. After about 40 minutes of these activities, we have a half-hour meal, usually pizza. After the meal we go to the keynote activity, such as a speaker or video. This is the part of the program we hope hooks participants by touching them emotionally. Following this activity, the students return to their groups for discussions, case studies, and reflections. These intense conversations and procedures lead to goal setting around future actions. Closing activities involve both personal and community commitments. For example, students might make a personal pledge to change their behavior around drugs and alcohol, and commit to wearing their bright orange Challenge Night T-shirts to school the next day as a sign of solidarity. 
<P>Each activity also requires that participants take part in a program evaluation so the organizers have a sense of how effective the program was. 
<P>These evaluative tools typically help determine whether or not the participants really connected to the program. We often ask students to write a personal reflection as the program draws to a close. Did the students simply enjoy the fun activities and the pizza, or did they really commit to bringing about positive changes in their school? In the several dozen of these programs I have been involved with, the sentiments of the students have been overwhelmingly consistent: it has been about much more than the pizza! Students have left feeling empowered to affect their world and feeling significant. 
<P>Prior to our Challenge Night program this past spring, the one that Eric alluded to, the student council asked me to train fifteen student facilitators and help them create an agenda around the concern about drug and alcohol use by our students. This idea had come from an earlier Challenge Night that our student council had sponsored in the fall, in which drugs and alcohol issues had appeared as a major concern among the participants. They subtitled the program <I>The Truth About 857</I> (the number of students attending our school) implying that they wanted our students to be "real" about this topic. 
<P>The training for student facilitators consisted of putting them through a mock-up structure that several students and I developed and having the student facilitators suggest changes and make additions that they thought would work with the students who would attend. It was much more of a creative exercise than it was training. For example, I had set up a way to divide the participants into groups when they first arrived on site. It involved each student having a puzzle piece and having them find other students with matching pieces. The students I was training felt that my idea was too cumbersome and devised an easier variation. 
<P>We also decided early on that this entire program would be student-led and the adults would simply be there to support the student facilitators. We felt the student-led model would lead to more openness and truth telling by the attendees. Near the end of each Challenge Night, the students participated in an open microphone activity. For this Challenge Night, the supervising adults left the hall, allowing students to share freely without the intimidation of adult spectators. This really occurred as a result of a request of the student leaders during their training. Although having the adult supervisors go out to the lobby might appear to be an irresponsible or high-risk action, the student facilitators knew where we were if they needed us and this was all part of the plan. 
<P>This point reminds me of an answer I once heard a student give when asked what the role of adults should be in a student-led activity. Twelve year-old Ashley responded, "The role of adults should be to help keep the kids safe while letting them learn by doing. It's kind of like being bumpers on a bowling lane, where they make sure the ball doesn't go in the gutter. Even little children get to experience the thrill of knocking down some pins." Ashley's metaphor is a great way to look at the student-led programs highlighted in this article.
<P>The special events illustrated here have helped create a school where the students genuinely feel that they have a role to play in making our school successful--that they are relevant. They feel that they attend a school where the adults trust them to take their role seriously and deliver responsibly. As Eric implied, a friend of his had been deeply affected by participating in a program designed by other students. Certainly, we did not flip a switch and create this climate overnight, but what we did do was start with the foundational belief that schools should be about students and that programs should be personalized around them. 
<P>If we want students to care about their education, shouldn't we involve them in the process? I have often heard celebrated author Margaret Wheatley indicate that people can only support what they help to create, and this maxim should hold true for students. Schools that want to positively influence their climate and culture--or create other improvement initiatives--would be well advised to let students become part of the solution. Personalization can truly happen only when students are given opportunities to contribute and be relevant.
